The $3 million question

Janet Albrechtsen’s latest coverage of the Sofronoff hearings in Canberra poses any number of questions about Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold’s seemingly monomaniacal drive to charge Bruce Lehrmann with the alleged Parliament House rape of Brittany Higgins. And there is this as well:

The Australian understands that text messages between Higgins and her partner, David Sharaz, record their contact with Labor senator Katy Gallagher about the politics of using this rape allegation against the Coalition government.

Sharaz was also caught – during a recording for Higgins’s interview on The Project – mentioning the political timing and his good friend, understood to be Gallagher.

And from The Australian of February 19:

Senator Gallagher was responsible for the department that paid out the confidential settlement of up to $3 million awarded to Ms Higgins in ­December over her claim she was not properly supported by Senator Reynolds and others after the ­alleged sexual assault

It isn’t within Mr Sofronoff’s terms of reference to determine how Ms Higgins came to pocket such a sum without anything having been proven and with police (as we now know) regarding her as an unreliable complainant.

That’s a great pity as such an inquiry might prove even more entertaining than Mr Drumgold’s witness-box admissions of serial errors and misconceptions.

UPDATE:  Douglas Drummond, who served as Queensland’s Special Prosecutor from 1981 to 1992 following the Fitzgerald Inquiry and subsequently on the Federal Court bench, writes to contrast the speed with which a large lump of cash dropped into Ms Higgins’ lap and the frustrations encountered by an Afghanistan veteran:

Such an investigation might be a good start for the new Federal corruption commission. Especially when the massive and lightning-fast payment to Higgins is contrasted with the way former Army corporal Shaun Spain was treated.

He served five tours of duty in Afghanistan. He retired medically unfit. He had to dip into his super to pay for the dozens of operations he needed from his war service injuries, with delays of his DVA compensation claims.

Spain left a note before he took his own life earlier this year in which he blamed DVA’s treatment of him as prompting his action.

— roger franklin